Pat Buchanan: Nixon's Resignation No Surprise to Inner Circle

Friday marks the 40th anniversary of President Richard Nixon's resignation from office in the wake of the Watergate scandal and political commentator, Pat Buchanan, who worked as an adviser to 36th president, says the resignation came as no surprise to him.

"I was at Camp David on the Sunday before when we basically got a hold of the June 23rd tape and matched it against what the president said, and we decided on sort of a strategy, basically, to put the tape out publicly on Monday, which we knew would cause a firestorm on Tuesday morning when it hit and the president would be forced to resign by Friday," Buchanan explained to J.D. Hayworth on "America's Forum" on Newsmax TV.
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"So it was no surprise to me, as a matter of fact by Tuesday," even before former Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater came over, and former Pennsylvania Sen. Hugh Scott, and former House Minority Leader Johnny Rhodes of Arizona. Nixon's speechwriter, Ray Price, was already working on the resignation speech, he added.

"So it was no surprise it was the end," he said, adding that it had been about 18 months, since March of 1973 that they had been going through that process.

Buchanan explained that the House Judiciary Committee had already voted to impeach Nixon.

"We knew that he could not survive in the House, people had already argued and I backgrounded the press that we might run," the former presidential candidate added.

"We knew the inevitable even before that hit, we thought there was a real chance he was going to be impeached and convicted," he added.

"If Nixon had just cursed and said, 'it is too bad, we're going to try to help those guys get some lawyers, but they've got to go, and the higher-ups who let it be happen got to be fired, and we've got to move on,' that would've ended it," Buchanan explained.

But he said that was not Nixon's way of doing things.

"Nixon had his flaws, but he was fundamentally a good man in my judgment. He was certainly good to me, I mean for seven or eight years I never had a better boss," he added.

Friday marks the 40th anniversary of President Richard Nixon's resignation from office in the wake of the Watergate scandal and political commentator, Pat Buchanan, who worked as an adviser to 36th president, says the resignation came as no surprise to him.